Geoffrey Ryskamp

As the hospitality industry emerges from the significant effects of the pandemic, it’s encountering new customer behaviors. Much of this will center around a holistic view of the travel experience and how real-time engagement technology can empower hotels to connect with guests and maximize their experiences.

Today's top-performing travel and hospitality brands are achieving success during this summer's travel boom – while also planning for growth during the upcoming holiday travel season ahead – by doing these five things to drive loyalty, repeat bookings and overall customer lifetime value.

With the hospitality industry undergoing the biggest disruption in customer loyalty ever, hoteliers will benefit from reevaluating their customer engagement strategies and best practices.

When hotel guests provide feedback, either positive or negative, it signals a willingness to engage with a brand and increases the chance for loyalty by almost 50%, according to recent research.

Don't let anyone try to convince you otherwise: Hotels have plenty of customers to take care of. In fact, there are more types of customers than ever who are looking for their needs to be met. Even if they're not checking in with you in person as often as they used to.

The effect the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the hotel industry cannot be overstated. The resulting changes in travel patterns and broader consumer behaviors have had the single greatest impact within the modern era of the hospitality industry.

But these changes also present an opportunity for hospitality brands to rethink guest satisfaction.

Just about anybody can think about how they’ve changed their relationship with at least one brand in the last 12 months. Maybe you used to have the next five flights booked with a certain airline, but you’ve lost that rhythm now that you’re no longer traveling for business. Maybe it's the coffee shop a block away from your office that you’re no longer a regular of, now that you're working from home.

It’s no different for hotels. And, as a consequence, what we traditionally think of as… Show more

Just about anybody can think about how they’ve changed their relationship with at least one brand in the last 12 months. Maybe you used to have the next five flights booked with a certain airline, but you’ve lost that rhythm now that you’re no longer traveling for business. Maybe it's the coffee shop a block away from your office that you’re no longer a regular of, now that you're working from home.

It’s no different for hotels. And, as a consequence, what we traditionally think of as guest loyalty has changed and is still evolving. Show less

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the hospitality industry are gloomy, but customer experience can be a competitive advantage — even if you think you don’t have a customer right now.

From the first thought of booking a hotel and online research for accommodations, to reservations and post-reservation engagement, critical interaction happens with a hotel brand long before the guest steps foot through the hotel's front doors. Specifically, pre-arrival experiences are becoming big moments that matter in providing stellar guest experiences, and in ensuring a reservation is retained or expanded upon.

Good customer service is key to any business’s success. But nowhere is a happy customer more important than in the hospitality industry, where guests look to staff to help them make their hotel experience as relaxing and comfortable as possible.

To ensure your hospitality company provides a positive and memorable customer experience, you must start with your best source of information – the guest. Gathering feedback teaches your enterprise what it’s doing right, what it’s doing wrong, and which of the two has more impact on the guest’s overall experience.

However, establishing brand loyalty and cultivating customers who return to your hotels time and time again takes more than a few survey questions. It requires looking at each… Show more

To ensure your hospitality company provides a positive and memorable customer experience, you must start with your best source of information – the guest. Gathering feedback teaches your enterprise what it’s doing right, what it’s doing wrong, and which of the two has more impact on the guest’s overall experience.

However, establishing brand loyalty and cultivating customers who return to your hotels time and time again takes more than a few survey questions. It requires looking at each piece of feedback through the guest’s perspective – seeing yourself as guests do – and using that data to determine next steps. It requires empathy. Show less

With several tech options to enhance the guest experience, the key is offering the convenience of choice, engaging customers to give them a meaningful experience in the digital environment they prefer rather than limiting the interactions and only listening on a specific channel or app. The hotel companies leading the way are those that have an overall strategy to connect the various interactions - both human and digital - to their broader guest experience platform and analyze and measure the… Show more

With several tech options to enhance the guest experience, the key is offering the convenience of choice, engaging customers to give them a meaningful experience in the digital environment they prefer rather than limiting the interactions and only listening on a specific channel or app. The hotel companies leading the way are those that have an overall strategy to connect the various interactions - both human and digital - to their broader guest experience platform and analyze and measure the success of each. Show less

The social media landscape for hospitality has changed dramatically in recent years: hotel social reviews have grown 20 times since the start of the decade, and in the last ten years, many new online review sites have emerged globally. In addition to Booking.com, TripAdvisor and Google--which account for more than 80 percent of hotel social reviews--China's largest online travel agency and review site Ctrip is now a major global player, achieving 16x growth between 2012 to 2016 and prominent in… Show more

The social media landscape for hospitality has changed dramatically in recent years: hotel social reviews have grown 20 times since the start of the decade, and in the last ten years, many new online review sites have emerged globally. In addition to Booking.com, TripAdvisor and Google--which account for more than 80 percent of hotel social reviews--China's largest online travel agency and review site Ctrip is now a major global player, achieving 16x growth between 2012 to 2016 and prominent in the luxury hotel market as the third biggest global website in social review volume. Show less

Customer feedback is constantly streaming in on review sites and social media. While this public feedback is incredibly valuable, it’s also vital to invest in direct solicited feedback such as surveys. If social media is a public forum, direct feedback is a personal dialogue between your company and your customers. Solicited feedback starts the conversation and allows you to get the responses you really want. Companies that want to increase verified feedback response rates and improve customer… Show more

Customer feedback is constantly streaming in on review sites and social media. While this public feedback is incredibly valuable, it’s also vital to invest in direct solicited feedback such as surveys. If social media is a public forum, direct feedback is a personal dialogue between your company and your customers. Solicited feedback starts the conversation and allows you to get the responses you really want. Companies that want to increase verified feedback response rates and improve customer experience can boost survey results with a few simple tips. Show less

As technology continues to evolve and influence how people travel, hoteliers can expect to see shifts in digital strategies across the industry—from marketing and in-house guest interactions to how brands interact with owners. Geoffrey Ryskamp, the principal director of global hospitality at software and customer experience company Medallia, names six digital hospitality trends that the industry should look out for in 2018.

At Medallia, we know that it is critically important for global hotel brands to understand how they are performing in customer experience versus their competition. That is why Medallia’s Social Feedback solution now includes Global Benchmarking, which enables real-time, brand-level benchmarking based on social reviews and scores from the top social sites in hospitality, delivered natively within Medallia Experience Cloud. With the ability to track aggregated metrics in social dashboards, slice… Show more

At Medallia, we know that it is critically important for global hotel brands to understand how they are performing in customer experience versus their competition. That is why Medallia’s Social Feedback solution now includes Global Benchmarking, which enables real-time, brand-level benchmarking based on social reviews and scores from the top social sites in hospitality, delivered natively within Medallia Experience Cloud. With the ability to track aggregated metrics in social dashboards, slice and dice social data, and receive trigger alerts for urgent feedback that requires immediate attention, we are excited to empower the hospitality industry to dive deeper into this wealth of data to better understand competitive positioning and increase customer satisfaction at all levels. Show less

Hospitality brands that want an effective word-of-mouth program should align referral programs with a broader strategy to create customer value for everyone — both prospects and patrons.

Getting customer engagement right in the digital age is both a science and an art. Traditional guest services, delivered with quality and care will never go out of style. But now hotels have to create an even more personalized and special experience than a local host offering a live-in-the-city experience. By measuring key customer touch points before and after guests arrive — now available through a wealth of digital information — hotels can create a comprehensive customer engagement strategy… Show more

Getting customer engagement right in the digital age is both a science and an art. Traditional guest services, delivered with quality and care will never go out of style. But now hotels have to create an even more personalized and special experience than a local host offering a live-in-the-city experience. By measuring key customer touch points before and after guests arrive — now available through a wealth of digital information — hotels can create a comprehensive customer engagement strategy that transforms guests into lifelong clients and keeps them coming back to a more traditional hospitality option. Show less

When hotel brands respond to reviews on sites such as TripAdvisor and Google it’s often a reactive endeavour.

Writer/editor of 2007 and 2008 quarterly editions of the Manhattan Lodging Index - An update on Manhattan's lodging market, widely used by lodging brands, developers, and owners.